Jeffery Deaver - Roadside Crosses

She leaned down, close to his face. "James. I will do everything possible to make sure that whatever prison you go to, you will never be able to get online ever again. Never in your life."

His face turned livid and he began screaming, "You can't do that! You can't take my blog away. My readers need me. The country needs me! You can't!"

Dance closed the door and nodded to the deputy behind the wheel.

The flashing lights-on personal business-were against regulations, but Dance didn't care. The emergency accessories were a wise idea, given that she was speeding at twice the limit down Highway 68 back to Salinas from Hollister. Edie Dance was being arraigned in twenty minutes, and she was going to be there, front and center.

She was wondering when her mother's trial would happen. Who would testify? What exactly would the evidence show?

Again she thought, dismayed: Will I be called to the stand?

And what would happen if Edie was convicted? Dance knew California prisons. The population was largely illiterate, violent, their minds ruined by drugs or alcohol or simply damaged from birth. Her mother's heart would wither in a place like that. The punishment would be the death penalty, after all-capital punishment for the soul.

And she was furious with herself for writing that email to Bill, the one commenting on her mother's decision to put down one of her ailing pets. Years ago, an offhand comment. Out of proportion to the devastating effect it could have on her mother's fate.

Which put her in mind of The Chilton Report. All of those postings about Travis Brigham. All wrong, completely wrong…yet they would be in existence, on servers and in the hearts of individual computers, forever. People might see them five or ten or twenty years from now. Or a hundred. And never know the truth.

Dance was shaken out of her troubling meditation by the buzz of her phone.

It was a text message from her father.

I'm at the hospital with your mother. Get here as soon as you can.

Dance gasped. What was this about? The arraignment was supposed to be starting in fifteen minutes. If Edie Dance was in the hospital it was only for one reason. She was ill or injured.

Dance immediately punched her father's mobile number, but it went right to voice mail. Of course, he'd shut it off in the hospital.

Had she been attacked?

Or had she tried to kill herself?

Dance shoved the accelerator down and drove faster. Her mind tumbling, out of control now. Thinking that if her mother had tried to kill herself, it was because she knew Robert Harper had a solid case against her, and that it would be futile to fight it.

So her mother had committed murder. Dance recalled the damning comment, revealing Edie's knowledge of the ICU corridors at the time Juan Millar died.

There were some nurses down on that wing. But that was all. His family was gone. And there were no visitors…

She sped past Salinas, Laguna Seca and the airport. Twenty minutes later she was pulling into the circular drive of the hospital. The car skidded to a violent stop, breaching the handicapped space. Dance leapt out and sprinted to the main entrance door and wedged through before the automatic panels had fully opened.

At the admissions station, an alarmed receptionist looked up and said, "Kathryn, are you-?"

"Where's my mother?" the agent gasped.

"She's downstairs and-"

Dance was already pushing through the doorway and downward. Downstairs meant only one thing: the intensive care unit. Ironically the very place where Juan Millar had died. If Edie was there, at least she was alive.

On the bottom floor she shoved through the door, hurrying toward ICU, when she happened to glance into the cafeteria.

Breathing hard, Dance pulled up fast, a stitch in her side. She looked through the open doorway and saw four people sitting at a table, coffee in front of them. They were the director of the hospital, the security chief Henry Bascomb, Dance's father and…Edie Dance. They were engaged in a discussion and were looking over documents on the table before them.

Stuart glanced up and smiled, gesturing with an index figure, meaning, Dance guessed, they'd only be a moment or two. Her mother glanced her way and then, expression neutral, returned her attention to the hospital director.

"Hi," a man's voice said from behind her.

She turned, blinking in surprise to see Michael O'Neil.

"Michael, what's going on?" Dance asked breathlessly.

With furrowed brows, he asked, "Didn't you get the message?"

"Just the text from Dad that they were here."

"I didn't want to bother you in the middle of an operation. I spoke to Overby and gave him the details. He was supposed to call when you were finished."

Oh. Well, this was one glitch she couldn't lay at the feet of her thoughtless boss; she'd been in such a hurry to get to the arraignment, she'd never told him they'd wrapped the Chilton take-down.

"I heard Hollister went okay."

"Yeah, everybody's fine. Chilton's in custody. Travis's got a banged head. That's it." But the Roadside Cross Case was far from her mind. She stared into the cafeteria. "What's going on, Michael?"

"The charges against your mother've been dropped," he said.

"What?"

O'Neil hesitated, looking almost sheepish, and then said, "I didn't tell you, Kathryn. I couldn't."

"Tell me what?"

"The case I've been working on?"

The Other Case…

"It had nothing to do with the container situation. That's still on hold. I took on your mother's case as an independent investigation. I told the sheriff I was going to do it. Pretty much insisted. He agreed. Stopping Harper now was our only chance. If he'd gotten a conviction…well, you know the odds of getting a verdict overturned on appeal."

"You never said anything."

"That was the plan. I could run it but I couldn't mention anything to you. I had to be able to testify that you knew nothing about what I was doing. Conflict of interest, otherwise. Even your parents didn't know. I talked to them about the case, but only informally. They never suspected."

"Michael." Dance again felt rare tears sting. She gripped his arm and their eyes met, brown on green.

He said, frowning, "I knew she wasn't guilty. Edie taking somebody's life? Crazy." He grinned. "You notice I've been talking to you in text messages a lot lately, emails?"

"Right."

"Because I couldn't lie to you in person. I knew you'd spot it in a minute."

She laughed, recalling how vague he'd been about the Container Case.

"But who killed Juan?"

"Daniel Pell."

"Pell?" she whispered in astonishment.

O'Neil explained, though, that it wasn't Pell himself who'd killed Juan Millar, but one of the women connected with him-the partner that Dance had been thinking of yesterday as she'd driven her children to see their grandparents.

"She knew the threat you presented, Kathryn. She wanted desperately to stop you."

"Why did you think of her?"

"Process of elimination," O'Neil explained. "I knew your mother couldn't've done it. I knew Julio Millar hadn't-he was accounted for the whole time. His parents weren't there, and there were no other fellow officers present. So I asked who'd have a motive to blame your mother for the death? Pell came to mind. You were running the manhunt to find him and getting closer. Your mother's arrest would distract you, if not force you off the case altogether. He couldn't do it himself, so he used his partner."

He explained that the woman had slipped into the hospital by pretending to be applying for a job as a nurse.

"The job applications," Dance said, nodding, recalling what Connie's investigation had found. "There wasn't any connection between them and Millar, though, so we didn't pay any attention."